Movin’ On Up

Finally, after 54 years of Super Bowls, a woman, the first woman to do so, Sarah Thomas, will be officiating at the 2021 Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 7.

Ms. Thomas, a native of Pascagoula, Miss., was a super star on the softball team in high school, attaining a scholarship to the University of Mobile where she played basketball. After college she began working as a referee at high school games, then college, then bowls and now the Grand Daddy of them all, graduating to the NFL in 2015.

This Super Bowl she will serve as down or line judge, also known as head linesman, who stands at one end of the scrimmage with the chain crew to observe any fouls such as off sides before the snap and coordinating the chain.

She is no cupcake. During a NFL game in December, 2016, she took a hit from a player and broke a bone in her wrist. She officiated the rest of the game with a broken wrist. Look for Ms. Thomas as she takes the field for a first at the LV Super Bowl. She’s number 53.

Another Sarah, Sarah Fuller, became the first woman to join a Power Five Conference college football team, Vanderbilt, and to kick a field goal. Covid had ravaged the Vanderbilt team and she was given the chance to prove her ability. She was attending Vanderbilt on a soccer scholarship.

2020 was the year of the woman as we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution which gave women the right to vote. Another hard fought battle won. And the big prize was Kamala Harris, the first woman Vice President. And we are represented in Jasper County in Georgia Legislature by Susan Holmes.

Over 51 percent of the United States population are women. In Georgia, slightly higher, 52.4 percent women. So we have an edge at the ballot box if women get out and vote.

Maybe you have heard that women are the “weaker sex.” Beg your pardon? The mystery is solved according to poet, Ogden Nash, who wrote, “I have an idea that the phrase the “weaker sex” was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm.”